By Femi Fani-Kayode
Ikemefuna Okeke, Karl Von Batten, Karl Marx, George Edward, Karl M.E. Okeke or whichever of your numerous names that you choose to call yourself this week, consider the following.
You said our president was smuggling drugs into America: this is false. Prove it.
You said our president was indicted for smuggling drugs in America: this is false. Prove it.
You said our president was convicted for drug smuggling in America: this is false. Prove it.
In 2003, Michael H. Bonner of the American Consulate in Nigeria wrote Inspector-General of Police Tafa Balogun that an FBI NCIC check on Tinubu was “negative for any criminal arrest records, wants, or warrants”.
That is incompatible with the claim that he was arrested, wanted or convicted in America for drug smuggling.
If you have an indictment or a conviction, produce the instrument.
Circulating a paid brief from Atiku Abubakar’s lobbyist does not turn a 1993 civil forfeiture into a criminal verdict.
You insist on peddling the falsehood and perpetuating the lie that President Bola Tinubu was a drug smuggler after being paid to do so by Waziri Abubakar Atiku.
A paid brief can circulate a civil file: it cannot manufacture an indictment or a conviction that the 2003 NCIC check said was not there.
In continuation of a widely published essay I wrote about you on 8th September titled ‘Who is Karl Ikemefuna Von Batten and What is He Hiding?’, permit me to share a few more home truths with you in this contribution.
You are an inconsequential figure who is not known or recognised in notable circles anywhere in the world, including your adopted nation, America.
If there was ever a “Mr Nobody”, it is you, yet you try so hard to give the impression that the contrary is the case.
You give the false impression that you are an upstanding and credible individual, yet nothing could be further from the truth.
Consider your wife, whose original name was Kathy Grier, which, for reasons best known to her, she changed to Liz Blazevich. A few years later, she once again changed her name from Liz Blazevich to Elizabeth Von Batten.
Your name was Ikemefuna Okeke, which is an Igbo name and confirms your Nigerian ancestry. You adopted the same modus operandi as your wife and changed it to ‘Karl Von Batten’.
There is nothing wrong with changing names, but in your case you did so after you were the subject of an indictment and a criminal conviction by an American court in 2003.
The greatest irony of it all is that a convict, who uses no less than nine different names and who claims that he graduated from at least five different universities, none of which there is any record to prove that he attended, is accusing others of corruption and of being drug smugglers and criminals.
Again, you insist on introducing yourself as ‘Dr.’ when there is no record of you earning a doctorate from any university in the world or of being a medical practitioner.
I do not have much time for you, but permit me to share the following words with you before closing your chapter and moving on.
The greatest honour you have ever attained in your life, and that you are ever likely to attain, is to have been acknowledged by me.
You lack the relevance or seriousness to attract any significant attention from the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Your rants on social media are invisible to most of us whilst the few that have noticed you, like me, consider you to be nothing more than a mild irritation and oftentimes a source of light entertainment.
Your lamentations about an old 1993 civil forfeiture case involving bank accounts which belonged to President Tinubu are simply an attempt to justify your brief.
Your client has paid you $1.2 million to diminish, discredit and destroy President Tinubu, and evidently you want to collect more.
How you managed to fool him, I don’t know, because the old Atiku that I knew 23 years ago, when we served in the same government under President Olusegun Obasanjo, was as sharp as nails and would have seen through you and saw you for what you are within seconds.
I guess times have changed, and he has changed with them.
Whatever the case, he made his choice even though the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project matter, in which his former wife, Madam Jennifer Douglas Abubakar, was given $500,000 by my old friend Laitan Adesanya, proves that he has some questions to answer.
Most importantly, his commissioning of someone like you to do what is essentially a hatchet job on the president of his country and a man who was once his dear friend reflects badly on his judgement, which is clearly not what it used to be.
I close with the following.
It has been brought to my attention that you have publicly alleged that I want to either murder you or kidnap you.
Your so-called ‘evidence’ is a tweet that I posted on X on September 20th which, since you saw it, has caused you to hide under your bed in trepidation and resulted in you walking around with your knickers in a twist.
I urge all those that are interested to read the tweet themselves and consider whether it constitutes a threat to your life and liberty.
I accept that your English or understanding of the English language may not be that good, but by any stretch of the imagination, your interpretation and understanding of what I posted is well off the mark.
For the record, nobody is interested in “killing” or “kidnapping” you, as you and your company have alleged on X, so stop bleating like a spineless quisling and screaming like a gutted pig: it is pathetic.
I am not in the business of killing people or of kidnapping them, but I am in the business of exposing those who have dedicated their lives to smearing the president and government that I serve and the country from which I proudly come.
I operate within the law and fully intend to continue to do so, and I will engage you on all fronts as long as I choose.
You can go and report that to the Pope or anyone else if it makes you feel better, and rest assured that I couldn’t care less.
You, like everyone else, are accountable before the law, and this is especially so when you violate our Cybercrime Act and use social media to spread defamatory lies and falsehoods about our government, leaders and people.
Other than to report you to the relevant security agencies in our country for your continued infractions, I wish you no harm, and if you have done no wrong, you surely have nothing to fear from our courts or our justice system.
Being American does not confer on you the right to violate our laws, and neither can you silence or intimidate me with your threats and puerile hogwash. Ours is a democratically elected government and a great nation that is governed and guided by laws and not driven by threats and thuggery.
There is no conspiracy or plot to abduct or kill you here, and such thoughts and concerns are a figment of your wild and fanciful imagination and a consequence of the misplaced delusion that you are of any consequence or importance.
Your mind has evidently been befuddled by the wild conspiracy theories which brew and hatch within it and which have affected your thought processes.
No matter what the strange voices in your head and your delusions of grandeur lead you to believe, kindly remember that you are not James Bond but just a Washington-based lobbyist who is given to name-dropping and who spends his time threatening and insulting every Nigerian that disagrees with or opposes him on social media.
The irony is that you are the predator and not the victim. You cast aspersions on the character of others, insult and criminalise them, provoke them into a row, and when they respond and question your motives and credentials, you start crying like a little child.
You are nothing but a schoolyard bully who is incapable of taking what he delights in dishing out to others.
You hide under the cover of some firm and dare to threaten every Nigerian who questions you and responds to your slanderous provocations on X with court cases in America and reports to the American Congress, the American senate, the American state department, President Donald Trump and the FBI after goading and daring them into a fight, after which you present yourself as the innocent victim.
Kindly take note that you are not the only one with access to courts, lawyers and the institutions of state and understand that you are dealing with a man who comes from five generations of Oxbridge-level University graduates and three generations of Cambridge University-trained lawyers.
When my great-grandfather studied theology and graduated with a Master’s degree from Durham University in 1893, became an Anglican priest and took Christianity to my hometown, Ile-Ife, in 1897, yours were wearing grass skirts in the jungle and pouring libations at the shrine.
You cannot intimidate me with anyone or anything, and my fear is reserved for God alone. Know this and know peace.
As long as you tell lies, I, and any other Nigerian who has your time, have every right to respond to you in a lawful manner, and I will do so whenever and however I deem fit.
I am proud of my nation and my heritage; I do not suffer from low self-esteem; I do not have a chip on my shoulder; I do not run from a fight; and I do not bow and tremble before foreigners.
I wish you the very best.
Shalom.
Femi Fani-Kayode is a former minister of culture and tourism, a former minister of aviation, Nigeria’s ambassador-designate to South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba of Joga Orile, the Aare Ajagunla of Otun Ekiti and a legal practitioner.
Discussion about this post